Do Psychic Abilities run in families? Are they hardwired in the DNA?

[Ninurta]

Do Psychic Abilities run in families? Are they hardwired in the DNA?

As some of you know, I have an interest in genetic studies, perhaps a morbid interest in them. I ran across this notion in my travels on the Internet, and would like to present it here. The basic question is: do psychic abilities actually run in families? Are they hard-wired in the DNA, and if so, is there evidence for that?

It turns out that the answer to both questions may well be “yes”.

A recent (March 2021) study set out to gather evidence related to those questions. They gathered up a bunch of people, and winnowed them down to just 26 individuals – 13 who believed themselves to have psychic abilities, and 13 who did not – as a “control” group. What did they find?

Sequencing data were obtained for all samples, except for one in the control group that did not pass the quality controls and was not included in further analyses. After unblinding the datasets, none of the protein-coding sequences (i.e., exons) showed any variation that discriminated between cases and controls. However, a difference was observed in the intron (i.e., non-protein-coding region) adjacent to an exon in the TNRC18 gene (Trinucleotide Repeat-Containing Gene 18 Protein) on chromosome 7. This variation, an alteration of GG to GA, was found in 7 of 9 controls and was absent from all psychic cases.

That quote is found in the “Results” section of the abstract of the paper resulting from the study. Breaking it down, it indicates that a genetic mutation on chromosome 7 strips psychic abilities away from a person. The default setting is “psychic abilities = on”, and this mutation turns them off.

“Introns” make up 97% of our genomes, and were once called “junk DNA”, because scientists couldn’t find a reason for their existence, or what they did. It has since been discovered that contrary to being inert or “junk” DNA, they actually control the expression of their linked genes – they turn those genes “on” or “off”. In this case, the “wild” or original version of the intron is a GG base pair, and the mutation changed one of the G’s to an A → GA. That change in turn “turned off” the TNRC18 gene in those individuals, caused it to stop expressing. The pseudo-visible result of that change was that the mutant form stripped various psychic abilities from those individuals that they would have possessed under the original form of the intron.

That leads me to speculate that humans originally had a “sixth sense” manifesting in various forms, but that the sixth sense may be disappearing from humanity in the modern age. Long ago, there was good reason for that sixth sense – to warn of lurking or looming dangers that may not be present in the modern world. Anyone who has ever hunted knows that most, if not all, animals have that sixth sense, and often preternaturally “know” that danger is afoot. It’s a warning bell to them that causes them to “get scarce” when danger threatens. I can tell you from first-hand experience that, if you look at a prey animal’s eye, it will immediately go on the alert, even if it can’t actually “see” you. If, on the other hand, you concentrate your attention on the back of it’s head, it will be far less likely to detect you. That also has the added advantage of being able to predict it’s motion, for wherever an animal (including humans) goes, it’s head will go first.

The same sort of thing works in humans. Have you ever suddenly noticed someone looking at you from across a room or in a crowd? That’s the same effect, in action. It’s so common in humans that it has a name - “catching their eye”.

It took a little hunting to find the full version of this study. If you go to the original publishing house, they try to charge money for it. However, in the free spirit of the Internet, it can be found here in full at this link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...cing_study

Apparently, this sort of thing is of high interest in Scotland, particularly the north of Scotland. There is another paper titled “Scottish tradition of second sight and other psychic experiences in families” that I have so far been unable to uncover a full version of. It was published as a dissertation in 1996, but seems to have not found it’s way into the recesses of the Internet even now. Link to the reference for that dissertation: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/9674

“Second sight”, as I understand it, stands in relation to “first sight” like this: “first sight” is the normal sight we all use, the sight that grants us access to the physical visual world. “Second sight”, in contrast, seems to be an “inner sight” that grants access to a less physical, more spiritual world.

My Dear Old Dad had the “second sight”. He just knew things that he had no way of knowing through any normal channels of knowledge acquisition. He told me once he was “born under the veil” - what others refer to as “being born with a caul” that was the basis for his second sight. Whether that is true or not I have no way of knowing, but it does have the potential of being a side effect of the more primary genetic determinative factor, I would think. Being “born under the veil” or “born with a caul” is really nothing more than the baby’s face being covered by a portion or remnant of the amniotic sack at birth.

My paternal grandmother also had the second sight, according to some of my cousins that knew her better than I, because they lived nearby to her.

My sisters call me a “witch” because there are times I just know things that I have no way of knowing. That “knowing” usually takes the form of an uneasy feeling when I am being watched, or danger is about, the same as any other wild animal has. Some times, it takes the form of “seeing the future”, but never far ahead, and usually not too specific. For example, I once told them “something bad” was about to happen, and a few minutes later one of them fell and broke a finger trying to catch herself from falling. Just little stuff, so the CIA doesn’t need to be coming around trying to recruit me into their psychic army or anything.

Be that as it may, I do seem to have some anecdotal evidence that psychic abilities – not necessarily spectacular ones, just “something”, may well run in families. This study does seem to lend some support to that notion, and may give a scientific reason for it.

Other studies have indicated that up to 85% of people surveyed, including some scientists, have had some sort of “paranormal” experience at least once in their lives that they could not explain away. Of course any such studies are likely more anecdotal than scientific, as they are by nature subjective – the opinion of the reporting person – rather than objective.

All of the psychic subjects winnowed out into the survey for this particular study happened to be female. That doesn’t mean all psychics are female, but it could mean the bulk of them are. More, wider-ranging, studies are needed to confirm or refute that notion. It could be that the study was skewed because females may be more responsive to the notion than males, rather than reflecting any real concentration in human females. It could be that a higher concentration of females reported for the study, which would have a necessary effect on the gender of the folks eventually included in it.

The study also found that the prevalence of the mutation was linked to the spread of Christianity. One of the authors, digging deeper into that question, came up with the hypothesis that it was actually linked to the “Holy Roman Empire” area, specifically because of the Inquisition. Think of it – in an age where “witches” are feared and an organization instituted to root them out and eliminate them, persons with “unusual” abilities may be perceived of as “witches”, sought out, and eliminated from the gene pool. That would tend to increase the percentages of the mutation in the gene pool, because carriers of the mutation – those with their psychic abilities “turned off” - would be more likely to survive and reproduce, thus increasing their percentage in any given population… such as the Holy Roman Empire under the Inquisition.

Altogether, I think this study provides some food for thought, although it’s certain that more investigation into the phenomena needs to be done.

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[Chiefsmom]

It is an interesting idea.  One that my family believes in.

I have an old newspaper article somewhere, of my great great grandmother.  She apparently had a crystal ball and would do readings for people, with a high degree of accuracy.  
My paternal grandmother and my mother both read tarot cards for others.  They also taught me to always trust my "gut" feelings.

So, I am a believer.

[Ninurta]

It is an interesting idea.  One that my family believes in.

I have an old newspaper article somewhere, of my great great grandmother.  She apparently had a crystal ball and would do readings for people, with a high degree of accuracy.  
My paternal grandmother and my mother both read tarot cards for others.  They also taught me to always trust my "gut" feelings.

So, I am a believer.

I think it is Isaiah who, in the Bible, speaks of that "still small voice within" - what folks nowadays would call a "gut feeling". I'm wondering if the Inquisition didn't actually seek out people with that "spiritual" connection and mark them for elimination to prevent them from blowing the whistle and giving the lie to the claimed "spirituality" of the Catholic Church, given that many of it's higher ups are anything but spiritual - they are mostly politicians with frocks, who have no connection to The Divine at all, just an appointment to a mostly political office. But, since it's hard to ride herd on people when you are claiming to be something you are not, I think it might lead them to eliminate potential problems from folks who know better and could put the word out on the street about them.

Just a thought.

Regarding the crystal ball, have you noticed that folks claim to see spirits more often in reflective surfaces - mirrors, glass sheets, and the like? I even saw a video of one that was caught in the reflective surface of a plastic CD case. It makes me wonder if there may not be some uninvestigated reason for that in connection with physical properties. Is there something in the physics of light transmission that might make spirit more readily able to manifest in glass, either through it or as a reflection? I note that a number of people claim to have taken spirit photos of things they could not see with their bare eyes - in mirrors, in or through windows, and of course through the glass lens of a camera. Much in the same way that EVPs are often caught on electronic media when nothing was seen or heard at the time by the "ghost hunters".

Just something else to think about.

My Dear Old Dad once saw a face in a window. It startled him so much that he almost shot the window out, as it was entirely unexpected, and he thought that someone was peeping through the window. He didn't shoot, because it just vanished when he thought of shooting at it. He wasn't "ghost hunting" - that was something he never did - he was just sitting there in the living room minding his own business. He later convinced himself that it was just a hallucination, and worried for months over it, that he thought his sanity might be slipping. He didn't believe in ghosts for most of his life, saying "The Bible says 'the dead know nothing; " whenever the subject came up. It was only in later life, not long before he died, that he conceded ghosts might be a thing, since the Bible spoke of the Holy Ghost, and if folks had to specify "Holy", then it stood to reason there might be some unholy ones around, too.

No, he wasn't a terribly religious man, but he did know what the Bible had to say on many a matter from his upbringing as a mountain Methodist.

I have to wonder - do you have any Scottish in your background? There is apparently an area in Scotland where 1/3 of all respondents claimed that "Second Sight" ran through their families. For example, I have documented family connections to Ayrshire in Scotland, and undocumented but genetically verified connections to other areas of Scotland over millennia, from a Bronze age burial 4000 years ago somewhere around Perthshire I think to a Pictish graveyard far north in early medieval times.

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[xuenchen]

I predict RN will be back online 1-1-2024, and I will be the first post!

[BIAD]

I predict RN will be back online 1-1-2024, and I will be the first post!

Now that's just plain weird!

[quintessentone]

@Ninurta For my family, I'd say yes, but the family members that have psychic abilities the abilities vary widely (or do they? or do we allow or disallow certain abilities?). For instance, my mother can see the immediate future in her mind's eye as well as ghosts. 

The intuitive abilities, or gut feelings, are very strong with myself and always warn me of a dangerous situation - whether I listen to it or not is another matter. 

When I would go to psychic fairs, the others psychics would just know that have abilities which I keep on the back burner. Actually one psychic called me out on the fact that I don't use the 'gift' (as she called it) and that she felt I was throwing the gift away. I told her that it was my choice, my free will to do what I felt best (not sure why some people think they have the right to interfere in others' life choices). Another psychic who was trying to do a reading for my husband asked me to leave the room because as she told me, that I was interfering with her psychic abilities, so I left the room - weird.

I once saw a frightening green-faced ghost once when using a Ouija board and when my father died he did appear to me in my mind's eye for a few seconds smiling ear to ear then never again. I suppose if I wanted to I could contact the spirit world, but I keep that closed off because it's not something I want to pursue. However, during a specific meditation geared at contacting my spirit guides, which I did twice, once by myself and again with a Shaman guiding the way, the contacts were successful.

My brother, who died young due to living a bad lifestyle and mental illness, told me before his death that he will contact me from the other side to prove to me once and for all that the soul/spirit continued to exist. A few days after his death my phone and the phone in his apartment (where my mother was cleaning and clearing it out) both kept ringing all day long. And when you'd pick up the receiver there would be absolutely no sound on the other end. I took that as a sign from the great beyond.

I suppose nonbelievers could offer explanations for all these events but I've been on this Earth for a long time now and there are signs that psychic forces exist.

I have since returned to using my abilities in doing oracle tarot card readings for myself and I may start meditating again to go to that nothingness void and see what the universe wants me to know.

[Ninurta]

@Ninurta For my family, I'd say yes, but the family members that have psychic abilities the abilities vary widely (or do they? or do we allow or disallow certain abilities?). For instance, my mother can see the immediate future in her mind's eye as well as ghosts. 

...

I personally think that it's entirely possible there is a gene for it, but that the gene only turns it "on" or "off", and nothing more - what the individual can do with it may lie elsewhere, in another gene or just in the way their brain is wired. Think of a computer - there is a switch to turn it on or off, but that switch does not tell it what to do. The instruction set for what it is to do resides elsewhere.

I don't fool with tarot or Ouja or anything like that. Matter of fact, I won't even allow a Ouija board in my house. One of the daughters of my third wife - the daughter I call a "Barnes and Noble witch", used to fiddle with stuff like that. She fancied herself a "witch" because she'd read some books, and used to call stuff up all the time. Problem was, she could only do it one-way. The spooks came in, but she couldn't get 'em to leave. That fell to me. So, if they got too troublesome, I'd throw them out... but then she'd just call in another one. That got old fast, so I eventually just stopped throwing them out, and let them have their wicked way with her. They never bothered me, so I left them alone to bother her.

Then a few months after I stopped doing that, I left the house, just moved right out and away, and left them there to deal with whatever they could conjure. Or it to deal with them. Either way, I snaked myself out of that loop. I figured it's the only way they'd ever learn.

Ouija boards don't come into this house. I'll break 'em, or bury 'em, or toss them and their owner back down the hillside, but they ain't coming in this house. They cause too much trouble when folks think they're just playing a game. that game can get pretty real and out of hand upon occasion. You can't burn them, as that just releases their evil, or whatever evil tries to come through them, out into the atmosphere. So you've got to break, or bury, or break AND bury, them. OR - just keep them the hell out of the house. All it takes is for ONE person to forget to close a session, and they stay wide open for anything to come through. So best to keep them away.

Most of the spooks folks talk to with Ouija boards are not who they say they are, anyhow. They're usually just bad actors trying to sneak in under the radar and get a toe-hold.

I also don't go around trying to contact spirits. I figure if they have anything to say to me, they'll contact me. I don't feel a need to go looking for trouble. It has a habit of finding me, anyhow, so I don't need to go looking.

Sometimes, they do come calling. When I was 11 years old, while I was on vacation, my best friend died. I had a dream, and when I woke up, I was so convinced that I told my sister that he had died, which of course she scoffed at. But, when we got home, we hadn't been home 5 minutes before a neighbor kid came over and told us he had drowned. I was feeding the dogs at the time, and so I just went on feeding them, but with tears running down my face at the confirmation.

When my Dear Old Dad died, I was pretty stone-faced. We took him across state lines to bury him at his home place, and I sat on the coffin as a seat for the trip. That's just how stone-faced I was. Same, all through the funeral, and the burial at the cemetery. It was later that evening, after we had buried him, that I was sitting on the steps of my uncle's house, watching the dusk come in, when I "felt" dad there, saying his good byes. Might have been nothing more than a mere feeling, but that was all it took for me to break loose.

When our daughter died, I was laying in bed - we knew it was coming, just waiting for the call - when all of the sudden I HEARD her voice in the room with me, Grace was sitting across the room in a chair.. so I was sure she heard it too. It sounded to me like an actual, physical, voice, like the daughter was right there in the room with us, pretty as you please, just making a visit. I heard her say "Oh daddy! It's so BEAUTIFUL here! Take care of momma. Bye!" And that was it. I sat bolt upright in the bed looking around for her, but there was no one there but Grace and myself. Grace wanted to know what was wrong with me, and I wouldn't tell her. Couldn't figure out HOW to tell her. She hadn't heard it, even though I thought she had to have. About 2 or 3 minutes later, we got the call from Grace's mom that the daughter had passed.

Grace kept at me until I told her what had happened, because I felt kinda foolish. You see, I'd never heard the daughter call me "daddy", she always used my first name. ALWAYS. So I told Grace that I must have imagined it, because of that... and that's when she told me that for the last month, while she was in Texas visiting the daughter, that she had been consistently referring to me as "daddy" for the whole month Grace was there. That was just one of those things that make you go "hmmmm...".

There's a few more stories similar, but you get the gist. I don't go looking for them, I wait for them to come to me if they've got anything to say.

Likewise, when a spook comes calling, I don't just automatically toss them out. Everyone has to have a place to "be", spooks included, so if they're not being a problem, I just leave them alone to "be". If they leave me alone, too, then everyone gets along just fine.

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[quintessentone]

@Ninurta For my family, I'd say yes, but the family members that have psychic abilities the abilities vary widely (or do they? or do we allow or disallow certain abilities?). For instance, my mother can see the immediate future in her mind's eye as well as ghosts. 

...

I personally think that it's entirely possible there is a gene for it, but that the gene only turns it "on" or "off", and nothing more - what the individual can do with it may lie elsewhere, in another gene or just in the way their brain is wired. Think of a computer - there is a switch to turn it on or off, but that switch does not tell it what to do. The instruction set for what it is to do resides elsewhere.

...


Likewise, when a spook comes calling, I don't just automatically toss them out. Everyone has to have a place to "be", spooks included, so if they're not being a problem, I just leave them alone to "be". If they leave me alone, too, then everyone gets along just fine.

....

My condolences on losing your daughter, I have a daughter, and I can't imagine going through that tragedy in life - your story almost made me cry. Although having said that, my daughter and I were just discussing how energy is never destroyed rather it is transformed. I further added to our discussion that I am at the point in life where I absolutely believe in an afterlife, as well I have been able to do out of body experiences, so those experiences cemented that belief because our soul/spirit, to me, is something completely separate within whatever this energy/matter existence is on this Earthly plane, but there are other planes.

I keep hearing from psychics that everyone has the gift, so your turning it 'on and off' via the physical/brain path may be correct because that is why chakra and/or crystal work in opening the bodily and spiritual (third eye) energies is recommended. However, in my situation I can choose to turn it 'on or off'. I turn it 'on' after I cleanse my aura using stones/crystals and use protection stones because when I do open up I don't want any unwanted spirits manifesting. But, hey, even if they manifest I'm a kick ass kind of gal and I'll get out the sage and burn the hell out of my space. The spirits seem to know they can't get far, so most won't even try. lol

Now that I am analyzing what those other psychics were telling me, that I "have the gift and don't use it and that's a waste", is that they don't have the intensity of psychic abilities that I have, so they really should not judge my choices in how I use the gift because I have spent a great deal of my life learning and controlling it. 

Like you, I'd rather keep spirits at bay and have a one-on-one with the universal one/all because I still have a lot to experience out there and within me - are they one in the same thing?

I'm really enjoying our conversation Ninurta, thank you.

[GeauxHomeLittleD]

I would say that it is possibly in the DNA. I have certain abilities and have attracted particular beings/activities my entire life but didn't know that my mother did also, only finding out when I called her about a scary experience I had in my late 30s to have her tell me that it happens to her as well. I don't know for certain if it runs in the family because mom was adopted but one of my girls is extremely intuitive so maybe it runs in the family but the gifts can be different? Also I have gifts but my sister does not, one daughter has gifts but the other does not so possibly (in my case at least) there could be only one carrier of the gene per familial generation?

[Ninurta]

I would say that it is possibly in the DNA. I have certain abilities and have attracted particular beings/activities my entire life but didn't know that my mother did also, only finding out when I called her about a scary experience I had in my late 30s to have her tell me that it happens to her as well. I don't know for certain if it runs in the family because mom was adopted but one of my girls is extremely intuitive so maybe it runs in the family but the gifts can be different? Also I have gifts but my sister does not, one daughter has gifts but the other does not so possibly (in my case at least) there could be only one carrier of the gene per familial generation?

DNA inheritance works like this: You get half of your DNA from your mom, and half from your dad... but you have the same amount of DNA as everyone else, so that means you only get half of your mom's DNA and half of your dad's DNA.

To make it more complicated, each child gets a different "half", a different set of genes, from each parent, which makes their DNA a little different from all the other siblings. It's just the luck of the draw which subset of DNA each person gets.

I found this out when I went to reconstruct my dad's DNA, as he had never been tested - mass testing wasn't even available when he died. So I took my DNA and my sister's DNA, separated out which was from dad and which was from mom, and then combined dad's DNA from myself and my sister. The result was about a 75% reconstruction of dad's genome. The addition of each sibling adds about half of the amount from the last one added that is "new" DNA. That's because the sibling's DNA overlaps in parts, so half is "new" and half is shared. Theoretically, I could reconstruct about 96.9% of dad's genome if I could get all of my siblings DNA tested and combine them all, but it would take the DNA from 5 of us to reach that level.

All of this is a long winded explanation of why you and your siblings, and your kids and all their siblings, have slightly different sets of your parent's DNA. It may be that one gets the psych gene, while another doesn't because they got that gene from the other parent. That goes for ALL of your DNA. It's why one sibling may have blue eyes while another may have brown eyes - each got a different gene for eye color, although both had the same parents.

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[Ninurta]

OH! Looky what I found: a Wikipedia article about the 'God Gene'. If spirituality may be inherited through DNA, then why not psychic abilities, too? After all, they are rally just another form of spirituality from religion.

Here is a paper on the 'God Gene' at PubMed.

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[quintessentone]

OH! Looky what I found: a Wikipedia article about the 'God Gene'. If spirituality may be inherited through DNA, then why not psychic abilities, too? After all, they are rally just another form of spirituality from religion.

Here is a paper on the 'God Gene' at PubMed.

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I seem to be encountering studies that don't quite follow previous clinical research to the letter, rather they veer off course and the PubMed study seems to do this as well. And it appears they could not understand a previous study's methodology.

Although our study may not directly replicate Hamer's (it is not clear which A/C polymorphism he examined), students enter into this dialogue by testing whether they too see an association between VMAT2 variation and spirituality.

Also the students (low numbers for a study?) are all in liberal arts, so right there we have a biased leaning perhaps? towards the more creative hence spiritual?

So I'm not sure at this point whether the DNA gene is diluted, so to speak, within the generations or the DNA genes are mixed up in different percentages or perhaps deleted altogether or has any bearing at all.

[Ninurta]

OH! Looky what I found: a Wikipedia article about the 'God Gene'. If spirituality may be inherited through DNA, then why not psychic abilities, too? After all, they are rally just another form of spirituality from religion.

Here is a paper on the 'God Gene' at PubMed.

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I seem to be encountering studies that don't quite follow previous clinical research to the letter, rather they veer off course and the PubMed study seems to do this as well. And it appears they could not understand a previous study's methodology.

Although our study may not directly replicate Hamer's (it is not clear which A/C polymorphism he examined), students enter into this dialogue by testing whether they too see an association between VMAT2 variation and spirituality.

Also the students (low numbers for a study?) are all in liberal arts, so right there we have a biased leaning perhaps? towards the more creative hence spiritual?

So I'm not sure at this point whether the DNA gene is diluted, so to speak, within the generations or the DNA genes are mixed up in different percentages or perhaps deleted altogether or has any bearing at all.

I think they could not replicate Hamer's study because he never published in in the scientific literature. Instead, he published a mass-market book, which didn't really lay it out the same way a scientific paper does. Specifically, I think they didn't really understand which SNP's they were trying to assess. They knew which gene to look at, but not the specific SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms).

My own DNA data is just a long list of SNPs, a long listing of C, T, G, or A at specific positions within the genome. I've been tested at two services, and each one has 600,000 or 700,000 SNPs listed, but each reads slightly different SNPs. So I took both of those raw data files and combined them into a single file, which lists about 1.2 million unique SNP locations. However, without knowing which SNP to look at specifically, I have no way to assess whether I have the mutation that turns the gene off, or whether I have the original SNP that defaults to on. Without knowing which SNP to look at, there is also the potential that neither service tested for that specific SNP anyhow.

The sample size was low because an actual study was not the primary objective. Instead, they were trying to teach science principles  to Liberal Arts students. So the sample size was just a single class. They self-tested just to make it personal and more interesting to the students to hold their attention. They did apparently publish a spread sheet on the internet in case other colleges wanted to run the same class, and add their results to the initial one to increase the sample size across multiple colleges, but when I went to look at the spread sheet, it's no longer on the internet.

ETA:

Apparently, the mutation resides in the intron region of the VMAT2 gene, the part that tells the gene to turn on or turn off. That gene has 15 SNPs to choose from in the intron region:

The human VMAT2 gene consists of 16 exons and 15 introns and has been localized to chromosome 10q25. 

Source

I read elsewhere that the gene is on chromosome 10, "10q25" here. I don't know what the "q25" part means, not being a geneticist myself.

Apparently, this same study links a reduced risk of Parkinson's Disease (PD) to "overexpression" of the VMAT2 gene:

This study adds to the previous evidence suggesting that variability in VMAT2 promoter region may confer a reduced risk of developing PD, presumably via mechanisms of gene overexpression.

I take that to mean that if the gene is turned "on" (expressed) and then cranked up to 10 ("overexpression"), then it also confers a reduced risk of Parkinson's Disease.

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[BodhisattvaStyle]

Just a thought...

If this were the case, then why are there so few psychics? 

If this was something passed down the same as baldness, or diabetes, then it seems like psychic abilities would be just as common.

[Ninurta]

Just a thought...

If this were the case, then why are there so few psychics? 

If this was something passed down the same as baldness, or diabetes, then it seems like psychic abilities would be just as common.

How do we know they're not? Just because someone may have an ability in some area, it doesn't mean they will necessarily exercise that ability in the public eye.

Additionally, not all "psychic abilities" are the same. For example, if I had a psychic ability of  telekinesis, I wouldn't be trying to use that to make a living by gazing into crystal balls. Matter of fact, that' one I'd probably actively try to hide, because it would creep folks out and make me a pariah.If I could remote view, I'd probably hide that one, too. I wouldn't want folks avoiding me and looking over their shoulders when I wasn't even there wondering if I was "watching" them from the other side of the planet.

On top of all that, simply having an ability, any ability, even sight, hearing, etc isn't of the same strength from person to person. Some people may have an ability below the threshold of easy detection, even by themselves. Or it might display only during moments of extreme stress, and otherwise be dormant.

So, really, there is no way of knowing exactly how prevalent psychic abilities may be.

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[BodhisattvaStyle]

Just a thought...

If this were the case, then why are there so few psychics? 

If this was something passed down the same as baldness, or diabetes, then it seems like psychic abilities would be just as common.

How do we know they're not? Just because someone may have an ability in some area, it doesn't mean they will necessarily exercise that ability in the public eye.

Additionally, not all "psychic abilities" are the same. For example, if I had a psychic ability of  telekinesis, I wouldn't be trying to use that to make a living by gazing into crystal balls. Matter of fact, that' one I'd probably actively try to hide, because it would creep folks out and make me a pariah.If I could remote view, I'd probably hide that one, too. I wouldn't want folks avoiding me and looking over their shoulders when I wasn't even there wondering if I was "watching" them from the other side of the planet.

On top of all that, simply having an ability, any ability, even sight, hearing, etc isn't of the same strength from person to person. Some people may have an ability below the threshold of easy detection, even by themselves. Or it might display only during moments of extreme stress, and otherwise be dormant.

So, really, there is no way of knowing exactly how prevalent psychic abilities may be.

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Good point.

Funny...I just had a good laugh at the synchronicity I just experienced with someone "watching me."

[Ninurta]

Good point.

Funny...I just had a good laugh at the synchronicity I just experienced with someone "watching me."

It wasn't me, honest! I was busy replying to your thread about the mutant lima beans!

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[BodhisattvaStyle]

Good point.

Funny...I just had a good laugh at the synchronicity I just experienced with someone "watching me."

It wasn't me, honest! I was busy replying to your thread about the mutant lima beans!

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Funny how you had actually hit the nail right on the head. 
Your psychic gene must've switched on. 

[Stonerwilliam]

Do Psychic Abilities run in families? Are they hardwired in the DNA?

As some of you know, I have an interest in genetic studies, perhaps a morbid interest in them. I ran across this notion in my travels on the Internet, and would like to present it here. The basic question is: do psychic abilities actually run in families? Are they hard-wired in the DNA, and if so, is there evidence for that?

It turns out that the answer to both questions may well be “yes”.

A recent (March 2021) study set out to gather evidence related to those questions. They gathered up a bunch of people, and winnowed them down to just 26 individuals – 13 who believed themselves to have psychic abilities, and 13 who did not – as a “control” group. What did they find?

Sequencing data were obtained for all samples, except for one in the control group that did not pass the quality controls and was not included in further analyses. After unblinding the datasets, none of the protein-coding sequences (i.e., exons) showed any variation that discriminated between cases and controls. However, a difference was observed in the intron (i.e., non-protein-coding region) adjacent to an exon in the TNRC18 gene (Trinucleotide Repeat-Containing Gene 18 Protein) on chromosome 7. This variation, an alteration of GG to GA, was found in 7 of 9 controls and was absent from all psychic cases.

That quote is found in the “Results” section of the abstract of the paper resulting from the study. Breaking it down, it indicates that a genetic mutation on chromosome 7 strips psychic abilities away from a person. The default setting is “psychic abilities = on”, and this mutation turns them off.

“Introns” make up 97% of our genomes, and were once called “junk DNA”, because scientists couldn’t find a reason for their existence, or what they did. It has since been discovered that contrary to being inert or “junk” DNA, they actually control the expression of their linked genes – they turn those genes “on” or “off”. In this case, the “wild” or original version of the intron is a GG base pair, and the mutation changed one of the G’s to an A → GA. That change in turn “turned off” the TNRC18 gene in those individuals, caused it to stop expressing. The pseudo-visible result of that change was that the mutant form stripped various psychic abilities from those individuals that they would have possessed under the original form of the intron.

That leads me to speculate that humans originally had a “sixth sense” manifesting in various forms, but that the sixth sense may be disappearing from humanity in the modern age. Long ago, there was good reason for that sixth sense – to warn of lurking or looming dangers that may not be present in the modern world. Anyone who has ever hunted knows that most, if not all, animals have that sixth sense, and often preternaturally “know” that danger is afoot. It’s a warning bell to them that causes them to “get scarce” when danger threatens. I can tell you from first-hand experience that, if you look at a prey animal’s eye, it will immediately go on the alert, even if it can’t actually “see” you. If, on the other hand, you concentrate your attention on the back of it’s head, it will be far less likely to detect you. That also has the added advantage of being able to predict it’s motion, for wherever an animal (including humans) goes, it’s head will go first.

The same sort of thing works in humans. Have you ever suddenly noticed someone looking at you from across a room or in a crowd? That’s the same effect, in action. It’s so common in humans that it has a name - “catching their eye”.

It took a little hunting to find the full version of this study. If you go to the original publishing house, they try to charge money for it. However, in the free spirit of the Internet, it can be found here in full at this link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...cing_study

Apparently, this sort of thing is of high interest in Scotland, particularly the north of Scotland. There is another paper titled “Scottish tradition of second sight and other psychic experiences in families” that I have so far been unable to uncover a full version of. It was published as a dissertation in 1996, but seems to have not found it’s way into the recesses of the Internet even now. Link to the reference for that dissertation: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/9674

“Second sight”, as I understand it, stands in relation to “first sight” like this: “first sight” is the normal sight we all use, the sight that grants us access to the physical visual world. “Second sight”, in contrast, seems to be an “inner sight” that grants access to a less physical, more spiritual world.

My Dear Old Dad had the “second sight”. He just knew things that he had no way of knowing through any normal channels of knowledge acquisition. He told me once he was “born under the veil” - what others refer to as “being born with a caul” that was the basis for his second sight. Whether that is true or not I have no way of knowing, but it does have the potential of being a side effect of the more primary genetic determinative factor, I would think. Being “born under the veil” or “born with a caul” is really nothing more than the baby’s face being covered by a portion or remnant of the amniotic sack at birth.

My paternal grandmother also had the second sight, according to some of my cousins that knew her better than I, because they lived nearby to her.

My sisters call me a “witch” because there are times I just know things that I have no way of knowing. That “knowing” usually takes the form of an uneasy feeling when I am being watched, or danger is about, the same as any other wild animal has. Some times, it takes the form of “seeing the future”, but never far ahead, and usually not too specific. For example, I once told them “something bad” was about to happen, and a few minutes later one of them fell and broke a finger trying to catch herself from falling. Just little stuff, so the CIA doesn’t need to be coming around trying to recruit me into their psychic army or anything.

Be that as it may, I do seem to have some anecdotal evidence that psychic abilities – not necessarily spectacular ones, just “something”, may well run in families. This study does seem to lend some support to that notion, and may give a scientific reason for it.

Other studies have indicated that up to 85% of people surveyed, including some scientists, have had some sort of “paranormal” experience at least once in their lives that they could not explain away. Of course any such studies are likely more anecdotal than scientific, as they are by nature subjective – the opinion of the reporting person – rather than objective.

All of the psychic subjects winnowed out into the survey for this particular study happened to be female. That doesn’t mean all psychics are female, but it could mean the bulk of them are. More, wider-ranging, studies are needed to confirm or refute that notion. It could be that the study was skewed because females may be more responsive to the notion than males, rather than reflecting any real concentration in human females. It could be that a higher concentration of females reported for the study, which would have a necessary effect on the gender of the folks eventually included in it.

The study also found that the prevalence of the mutation was linked to the spread of Christianity. One of the authors, digging deeper into that question, came up with the hypothesis that it was actually linked to the “Holy Roman Empire” area, specifically because of the Inquisition. Think of it – in an age where “witches” are feared and an organization instituted to root them out and eliminate them, persons with “unusual” abilities may be perceived of as “witches”, sought out, and eliminated from the gene pool. That would tend to increase the percentages of the mutation in the gene pool, because carriers of the mutation – those with their psychic abilities “turned off” - would be more likely to survive and reproduce, thus increasing their percentage in any given population… such as the Holy Roman Empire under the Inquisition.

Altogether, I think this study provides some food for thought, although it’s certain that more investigation into the phenomena needs to be done.

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It took me 40 years to  finally listen to my gut instinct or the klaxon in my head as I call it .

I smoked a couple of joints a week back then and just put it down to a paranoid mind shrugged my shoulders and carried on , I lived  in a  really old property in the north of Scotland  30 + years ago that no one would live in for more than a few weeks before fleeing , if it had not been for my pets reactions I would have thought I was going nuts with what was going on in that cottage , doors banging ,milk cartons flying across the kitchen and really heavy boots clanking up and down the stairs and all this while I lived there alone .

That property had a very chequered past in its 250 plus year history , for the second time in my life I witnessed what some call apperitions  the first time was just after my grandfather died and I tried to grab it it vanished before my hands got to it , that old farm house was also 200 years old and near water also , a's was the second property .

The second time I saw this smokey grey apperitions was early  90s , one was a small woman and the other a extremely tall male behind her with a dickens style hat on , my pets who had been sound asleep instantly fled the living room and the cat would never come back into the house again , it went and lived in the 2 acres of garden I had dragging rabbits into the bushes .

One night I heard those heavy footsteps on the stairs and totally lost it ,telling what ever it was to F.O or pay some rent money and was never bothered again by it , the old lady had been burned to death nearby in the Highland clearness because she would not leave her croft house and the big dude with the hat was the Duke of sutherland who ordered it , I saw a painting of him and nearly fell over when I was in his family castle .


I am not a religious person but I do now recognise there is something there , what it is well above my pay grade or understanding but I know not to be frightened of it as I have come to understand it is just nature  or whatever teaching me something .

I also distinctly heard my old dog bark late one evening 2 days after I buried him , and you always know your dog's distinctive sound . And over the years I have heard a few people comment on this phenomenon without me saying anything about it to them or anyone for fear of being called a nutter .

I am convinced that this is something genetic that is in our blood , just like some people can smoke and drink like mad into a ripe old age and still look young and the next person can live a quiet clean life and drop dead at 40 and look like 80 years old .


My gut instinct is interesting to me , I ignored it for decades when it went off  then one day I listened to it and it has always been 100 right , normally it is the cops hunting for me that triggered it of but I can state it is not just a coincidence with the amount of times it has happened , and the old people with the second sight spent many hours staring at a open fire and the dancing flames way before television much like Nostradamus. 


The more you know about life the less you really know I find , G.R  Martin used a character from my area in his Game of thrones series ,The Brahan seer

[Ninurta]

It took me 40 years to  finally listen to my gut instinct or the klaxon in my head as I call it .

I smoked a couple of joints a week back then and just put it down to a paranoid mind shrugged my shoulders and carried on , I lived  in a  really old property in the north of Scotland  30 + years ago that no one would live in for more than a few weeks before fleeing , if it had not been for my pets reactions I would have thought I was going nuts with what was going on in that cottage , doors banging ,milk cartons flying across the kitchen and really heavy boots clanking up and down the stairs and all this while I lived there alone .

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Good to have someone from Scotland weigh in on it! You should have a firmer grasp of the "second sight" than even most of the literature, having lived it rather than just writing a paper about it.

Some times, you've just got to set your foot down as you did when you told a spook to either fuck off or pay some rent, I used to live in a house in Burlington, NC that was haunted. My son slept in an upstairs bedroom that he swore was haunted by a little old black lady, but I never saw her. After he left, however, I did sleep up there upon occasion, and one evening as I was laying in bed, but still awake, "something" got into the bed with me, behind me. You know how a bed sinks when someone gets in it? that's how it felt. I think whatever it was was trying to spook me. Anyhow, I never even rolled over, I just said out loud "you stay on your side of the bed, and we'll get along fine, but you come over here where I am, and we're gonna have some massive trouble that you ain't gonna like". After a minute or so, I felt the bed rise again like whatever it was got out, and was never troubled by it again.

You mentioned Sutherland. I live in an area of the Appalachian Mountains settled by Scot-Irish and German settlers, and Sutherland is a pretty prominent name around here, but s far as I know I've no kinship to any of them. The only Scots in my own family tree that I can name are lowlanders from Ayrshire, but when I had my DNA tested, I have some close kinship with some bones dug out of a Pict graveyard in Balintore, which I believe is up in the Highalnds, as well as some truly ancient bones (Neolithic or Early Bronze Age) from out on the Orkneys, and a couple of other Bronze Age burials at other points around Scotland.

I mention that because IF it truly is genetic, and there is a strong tradition of the Second Sight in Scotland, I can at least point to a potential source of the gene in my family tree.

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